


cumulation

by akitania (spacehairdresser)



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: F/M, Junji Ito Is Not Invited, M/M, Multi, Patterns, Pondering Possibilities, pre-polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 00:36:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11543757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacehairdresser/pseuds/akitania
Summary: Bertrand spent the summer after he finished school at Lake Lachrymose. According to his first letter, he spent more time collecting seashells than working toward his stated goal of domesticating the resident leeches. The news came as something of a relief to me.(Bertrand and Beatrice become preoccupied with a pattern, while Lemony becomes preoccupied with several others.)





	cumulation

1.

Bertrand spent the summer after he finished school at Lake Lachrymose. According to his first letter, he spent more time collecting seashells than working toward his stated goal of domesticating the resident leeches. The news came as something of a relief to me.

Beatrice and I, still in the city with a year of training ahead of us, laughed at his enthusiasm for the spirals he found in the shells, but Beatrice stayed up until dawn formulating a code based on the pattern.

I stayed up too, watching her write, rereading the letter, and considering Bertrand’s fascination with cumulative numbers.

 

1.

By the time Beatrice finished her response, it was incomprehensible to me, which she seemed to take as an insult. “You could have paid attention when I was making the cypher,” she complained.

I told her that if I, who had been with her the entire time, was not able to grasp it, there was no way Bertrand would without some kind of key, but she was unconvinced. “He’ll understand it.”

Inexplicably, a word which here means “because I spent so much of that summer considering the relations between the numbers one, two, and three,” I knew that he would.

 

2.

That afternoon, I found myself too exhausted by my sleepless night to pay attention at my summer job and forgot to record that a certain patron wanted his Cobb salad without avocado, and as a result a crucial message was obfuscated and I was sent home early.

There was too little air in my temporary shared apartment for the idea of spending the afternoon there alone to seem appealing. Instead, I took the tram to the beach and spent the ride thinking in rhythm with the rather jarring bumps of the tracks.

I pondered possibilities. Possibly, Beatrice was in love with Bertrand. Possibly, Bertrand was in love with Beatrice. Possibly, Bertrand was in love with me. Probably, I was in love with Bertrand. Plainly, Beatrice and I were in love with each other.

None of this troubled me, which troubled me.

I nearly missed my stop, preoccupied with possibilities, probabilities, and plainnesses, and found myself at Briny Beach almost too preoccupied to read, which was an unusual situation.

When you miss someone, you might find it comforting to do what you imagine them to be doing at the time, or even to imagine that you are doing it with them.

 

3.

“You have to really look at them,” Bertrand said. I didn’t bother imagining him unfolding my hand, which would have been unsatisfying, so I did it myself.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what kind any of them are,” I said of the shells in my palm. “My apprenticeship was by the sea in name only.”

He laughed, which I both imagined and knew to be a warm sound, and said, “To be honest, I don’t know a thing about classification myself. I just think they’re pretty.”

Beatrice once wrote in one of her sonnets that she was both chrysalis and butterfly in one, then made fun of herself for pretension and me for complimenting her metaphor.

The point, reader, is that the three of us shared a fondness for pretty shells.

“When you come back, I’ll give them to you for your collection.” I tucked the shells into my pocket, where I hoped I would remember them before washing my pants.

He smiled, but he was looking out to sea. “When I come back, will we talk?”

“Of course,” I said. “We talk all the time. I have work and Beatrice has rehearsal, but—”

“ _Really_ talk, Mr. Snicket,” he said. “And I’ll make Beatrice decode her letter for both of us.”

“You didn’t understand it either?” I asked.

Bertrand’s smile turned to me, along with the rest of him. “If you’re nervous about it, just ask Bea.”

I shook my head. “I’m too anxious to be nervous, but not about the letter. Beatrice told me what it said, which is that when you return to the city, the three of us should talk.”

“So you didn’t really have to ask me, did you?”

“No,” I said, and smiled back at him, “but I suppose I couldn’t wait to see you.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you're on tumblr and want a lot of inane Snicket content in your life, you can find me at [sublibrarian.](http://sublibrarian.tumblr.com)


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